What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-Opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography 2019

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What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-Opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography 2019 Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Cynthia Miller-Idriss What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography 2019 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/12379 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Sammelbandbeitrag / collection article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Miller-Idriss, Cynthia: What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography. In: Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (Hg.): Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right: Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US. Bielefeld: transcript 2019, S. 123–135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/12379. Erstmalig hier erschienen / Initial publication here: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446706-009 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 License. For Lizenz zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz more information see: finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography Cynthia Miller-Idriss “Many right-wing extremists don’t understand their own T-shirts”, a VICE-Germany headline proclaimed in March 2018 (Vorreyer 2018), sum- marizing research I had conducted with youth in and around far-right scenes about the meaning of far-right symbols, codes, and iconography (Miller-Idriss 2018). I had found that German young people do not always correctly interpret the messages in symbols on T-shirts marketed to and by the far-right – even when those codes are on brands that those same youths know are banned from their schools because of their far-right ideo- logical connections. As I was writing up the findings about the German case, across the At- lantic a cartoon character with no relationship whatsoever to the far right, Pepe the Frog, suddenly became co-opted by the emerging Alt-Right1 – in part through a series of memes depicting Pepe with a Hitler-style mus- tache, in a KKK hood and robe, and wearing a Nazi uniform, among oth- er caricatured links (Roy 2016). Within a year, the connection between Pepe the Frog and the US far right was so strong that Hillary Clinton 1 | The phrase Alt-Right is contested. Created by the modern US far right, it is criticized for the ways that it can soften or mask the extremist ideas of the var- ied groups that constitute it. Despite these concerns, the term carries a specific connotation to a unique development in the far-right scene in the US since 2015, which is distinct from older factions of the American far right such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood. I have opted to deploy the term here but use sin- gle quotation marks around my first mention of the phrase to signal its contested nature. 124 Cynthia Miller-Idriss denounced Pepe publicly, and the Anti-Defamation League added the car- toon character to their hate symbols database (Daniels 2018). These two examples reflect the complicated nature of far-right ico- nography and messaging in both offline and online spaces. Sometimes symbols are created and distributed with intentional messages that are not received as such – and other times, symbols with no deliberate mes- saging may be co-opted and marked as ideological in ways that were never intended. These developments challenge both our understanding of how far-right ideas spread and social scientists’ understandings of symbology more generally. What happens to a symbol if its meaning is not under- stood, even by its own consumers? What happens when new meaning is assigned in ways that were never intended? HOW DO SYMBOLS WOrK? Social scientists have long relied on the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure to help understand how symbols and signs work to construct and convey meaning. De Saussure’s work in the field of linguistics separated signs into two parts: the concept (signified) and the sound-image (signifier). Crucially, de Saussure argued that the relationship between concept and image is arbitrary: there is no logical reason why the word ‘sister’, he ex- plains, is linked to the concept of a sister. However, he argued that sym- bols were different in this regard: “One characteristic of a symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot” (de Saussure 2017[1966]: 120). If de Saussure is right, then far-right symbols should be logically con- nected to, and understood as, far-right concepts or ideas. But in fact, as this essay will show, that is no longer clearly the case. The rapid evolution of symbols in online spaces offers a specific challenge to de Saussure’s argument about symbols, while the ‘missed messages’ in coded clothing iconography raises additional questions about how symbols work and whether their power holds even when those who display them do not un- derstand them. What Makes a Symbol Far Right? 125 IcONOGrapHY aND tHE Far RIGHt In the following sections, I outline three ways in which symbols and ico- nography are deployed in far-right clothing and products: brands created by or for far-right consumers, in products deliberately laced with far-right symbols and codes; brands, logos, images and symbols that at their ori- gins have no relationship to the far right, but become co-opted as far-right symbols; and brands and products which deliberately or accidentally de- ploy far-right symbols and codes, either through attempts to draw media attention, or through ignorance and coincidence. Each of these three cases also illustrates the ways in which online and offline iconographies interact with one another as images, memes, symbols and iconography circulate in both domains. Madagascar T-shirts: Brands Marketing to the Far Right The first category of iconography appears in brands created by or for the far right. This is a relatively recent European innovation – the first high-quality, commercial brand marketing products to far-right consu- mers was Thor Steinar, a German brand which burst onto the scene with a slick mail-order catalog in 2002, but quickly developed physical stores and a sophisticated online presence with a website offering internation- al currency conversion and translation (Miller-Idriss 2018). Other brands rapidly followed in Thor Steinar’s footsteps, marketing T-shirts, hoodies and other clothing products coded with messages and iconography that directly invoked or indirectly evoked the Nazi and colonial era, Norse my- thology, the Christian crusades, and other contemporary and historical anti-immigrant and Islamophobic references. Some of the references in these brands are quite arcane, drawing on historical allusions that are rarely understood by consumers or observ- ers. For example, the brand Erik & Sons sells a T-shirt depicting a pas- senger ship with the phrase “Sweet Home Madagascar”. Madagascar was discussed as an original Nazi ‘final solution’ – an island to which Euro- pean Jews could be deported – before concentration camp gas chambers were constructed (Herf 2006: 146–47; Miller-Idriss 2018: 62). But when I showed an image of this T-shirt to 51 students as part of a series of far-right symbols and images during interviews in 2013-14, only three of them un- derstood the historical reference. Four respondents understood a similarly 126 Cynthia Miller-Idriss obscure historical reference in a T-shirt depicting the ‘Expedition Tibet’, which refers to the National Socialists’ Schutzstaffel (SS) expeditions to Ti- bet that were part of the broader Ahnenerbe (ancestral heritage) movement to research the Indo-Germanic roots of the Aryan ‘race’ (Reitzenstein 2014). But even then, one of those students’ responses was an educated guess about the Nazi origins of this code, based on other contextual clues in the image, including the old German script and the use of the word ‘expedition’ – rather than a response that indicated understanding of the meaning behind the ‘Expedition Tibet’ reference (Miller-Idriss 2018). Pepe the Frog: Co-opted Symbols The second category refers to brands and symbols that are appro- priated from non-far-right contexts and infused with far-right messages and meanings. In some cases, it is simply some coincidental symbolic resonance of their logos that leads to assimilation by the far right. Thus the ‘N’ in New Balance sneakers signified ‘neo-Nazi’ for a generation of racist skinheads in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, while the American military-style bomber jacket produced by Alpha Industries was co-opted in the same period because the Alpha Industries logo is similar in ap- pearance to a civil badge used to denote the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA). German neo-Nazis wear the sporty British brand Lonsdale because when displayed under a half-zipped bomber jacket, the letters NSDA are visible – the first four letters of the Nazi party’s initials, NSDAP (Miller-Idriss 2018). Other symbols, images, or brands are favored because they are per- ceived as aligning with radical right ideologies in some way. In the US, a well-known far-right website named the pizza company Papa John’s the “‘official pizza’ of the Alt-Right” due to the CEO’s donations to the Trump campaign as well as statements and positions that many viewed as aligned with Alt-Right ideologies (Maza 2017). But still other symbols have been appropriated with little explanation at all. The evolution of Pepe the Frog is a perfect example, and also illustrates how seamlessly online and offline iconographies are interacting with one another as a means through which symbols spread and evolve.
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